Sony is poisoning torrent swarms to contain data leaks

What do you do when hackers leak tons of sensitive corporate data via torrent trackers? Sony seems to think poisoning the peer swarm is a good counterattack.

According to sources with direct knowledge who spoke to Re/code, Sony has been leveraging Amazon’s cloud computing power in Asia in an attempt to prevent additional downloads.

Poisoning isn’t a new approach to situations like this. In fact, rights holders have been leaning on the technique to combat piracy for years. To poison a swarm, bogus peers identify themselves to the tracker with useless IP addresses. It’s fairly easy to do, and reasonably effective. Within minutes, thousands of fake peers can join a swarm and bring downloads grinding to a halt.

Unfortunately for Sony, what they’re doing is a bit like plugging holes in a dam with their fingers, and they just don’t have enough fingers to plug all the holes. Private forums and trackers will continue spreading the files even if major sites like The Pirate Bay go offline and the swarms of easily-located torrents end up full of fake peers.

The people Sony should actually be worried about getting their hands on the data already have it. Of course, throwing their hands up and saying “we’re screwed,” wouldn’t look very good to their industry pals. At this point it’s as much about saving face as it is actual containment.

And really, shouldn’t they be a bit more concerned about making sure that a data theft like this can never, ever happen to them again?